Compromised Wounds
by DreamEscape16
Summary: Natasha wants to give him everything the burns in her heart, but she knows that his is a target. The question she keeps on asking herself is, will she accept Steve as her weakness or allow him to be her strength? Hospital scene AU.


**Compromised Wounds**

**All characters belong to Marvel Comics**

**I own nothing**

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><p>Sometimes Natasha underestimated herself too much for her capability of goodness and to show her compassionate side to people. There was quiet kindness welled underneath the black layers of the infamous and lethal Black Widow. She was buried in a maze of red of her past, trapped in mirrors that reflected her different identities and always weaved in always kept herself guarded, alert and armed-and yet, she felt a division between her love for good men and missions. She refused to allow her emotions to betray her-weakness always began in heart; it always bleeds out the truth.<p>

Now, she was entering yet another dangerous game, her traitorous heart pounded with urgency as she fixed her eyes on him-Captain Steven Grant Rogers. The super-soldier and symbol of mortal nobility, valor and strength. He wasn't Clint, Barton not the brass and skillful assassin and operative she cherished as her friend-partner and once in her distant past a lover when he rescued her from the nightmares of her youth. Steve was pure, gentle and indestructible. He was rare treasure to protect with her guns. He was close to her, not trapped in the darkness of her sins, but waiting in the light of her frail redemption.

Steve was pure, gentle and indestructible. He was rare treasure to protect with her guns. He was close to her, not trapped in the darkness of her sins, but waiting in the light of her frail redemption.

Natasha settled her grayish-green colored eyes on Steve's laden form, scanning tentatively over the collection of bruises, scars and lingering smears of blood. His vitals for strong, and his handsome face battered with marks left by metal knuckles. His chiseled jaw lightly swollen, and plush lips had a spit in the arch. She knew he was a fighter.

He always carried the pain on his shoulders. He was righteous protector. A sullen angel who had chosen to enter the black veils of the world, and wield his shield against evil demons that crawled out of the pits. He wore silver wings, and his golden hair shone like a halo in the morning light. He was almost too perfect to grasp as a form of flesh and blood. The one thing that separated him from most of the men that condemned her to drown into the pools of red, was that when she looked deeply into the fathoms of stern crystal and stared beyond the oceans of blue, she felt her soul return. He always found a way to restore it back to her, even though she was told a dozen time she never had one.

Gently, she stroked her hand through his short golden locks, falling into a trance at the rise and fall of his broad chest. "Rest, Steve." she whispered, feeling her heart beat faster, as she craved to stare into fathomless shimmering blue of his steady eyes. She hovered over him; fraction of an inch of entering the danger zone, his soft exhales caused her blood to ignite with fire. The scent wafting, off his rippling muscles was intoxicating as she breathed him in. The world froze around her. She felt a certain level of uncertainty now consume her veins. The dark shadow of terror still shrouded over her. Everything shattered inside her. She looked down at him, her scarlet curls brushed over the side of his face, but she leaned over him almost like she had become his shield.

Steve's eyelids twitched as he had a vague sense of awareness of her presence, his heart became a chorus of a tranquil beat. He opened his eyes, slowly and winced as shafts of light became captive in the depth of foggy blue. He turned his head against the pillow, feeling the heat of her body enter through his mending bones. His muscles grew firm as he parted his chapped lips and then he looked up until he was eye level with her, and they were staring into the other's pain in the divisions of light and darkness. He licked his lips and called her by the name that always made her heart swell, "Nat?" he spoke in a strained, raspy and gentle tone. His eyebrows creased as he kept his eyes locked on her beautiful face. "Natasha, how long was I out?" He asked. His voice was husky, rough with anguish that he was trying to hide from her. Steve was never good at masking his emotions. He always had an honest face.

"Long enough for Sam to keep on replaying his music," she replied in a whisper, her pink shaded lips twisted into a snarky expression of a smirk. Steve felt the pain twist over the chiseled lines of his face and his blue eyes glimmer with hot tears.

"I was so close, Nat. So close to reaching him." He spoke with a hint of remorse rolling off his tongue. He gave her a painful and withering look. His mind had become wrapped with flashes of memory of the defiant, cocky and brazen James Barnes. The man he failed to save. The friend he grieved for whenever he looked at old photographs of the Howling Commandos.

Those were just pieces scattered in the darkened soul of the Winter Soldier, and he knew his blood brother was still imprisoned in the ice, and that somehow he would one day free the real Bucky from HYDRA's control. "He looked at me with so much rage and pain...He didn't look human. It's my fault...I should have gone back and searched for him. He would have done the same if it was me."

"Don't do this to yourself, Steve." Natasha spoke with a level of concern laced in her voice. Her eyes narrowed over the clusters of redden cuts on his temple. "We can't blame ourselves for the choices that people close to us make. Those mistakes are shades in the mixtures of darkness. They will fade out." A brush of torment climbed out of her throat. "Sometime you wish that somehow you could turn back time and erase those memories, and rewrite new ones without using red."

"You're taking about Agent Barton?"

Natasha sighed, and suddenly became distant. She knew he was close to infiltrating the barriers of her heart. Pieces of her soul had become detached like wandering threads blowing in the frosty wind and she wondered if another fragment that would break off and stabbed her, wondering if this was a punishment for her to receive from all the horrible things of her past. She knew that Steve had feelings for her-but they were partners. She used her guns and lethal skills that the KBG branded into her and he used his alloy shield and super-human strength. Why did she feel the urge to kiss him? She didn't deserve his warmth-or his strong heart.

She mashed her teeth into her bottom lip hard enough that she felt a tingling numbness follow the wake of pain. "Agent Barton and I are partners. We do missions together...There is nothing between us, but the understanding and need for survival," She said. The soft strains of her words made him curve his marked lips into a sullen frown. She worked her fingers as strokes over the hard muscles of his abdomen, rubbing the rough skin as his heat enter through her fingertips. His torn skin had already begun to heal from the moment his body pumped out the bullets. "You know Barnes didn't mean to do this to you, Steve." she spoke in a gentle voice, rubbing a finger in circular patterns over the graven ridges of his exposed stomach. "Whatever Hell they put him through, I think Barnes fought it. I know that is the reason why he didn't use a kill shot on you."

"I broke his arm, Natasha." Steve rasped out his confession. "I made my best friend feel pain by using my strength. Listening to his cries when the bones snapped that hurt more than the bullets." She saw the shrouds of vulnerability, the raw and grieving anguish welling in the pools of blue. He was punishing himself with a guilt and regret. "I never wanted to do that to him."

Hearing those words touch her heart, Natasha lifted her hand, and threaded his short gold tresses in between her fingers. She felt like they were reaching equal terms. Sharing the endless hurt, exposing their secrets. Her world was starting to become tints of grey and coldness in the ivory of her bones dissolved as the security and warmth of him cloaked over her soul. "Sometimes we have to do those things, Rogers. No matter how wounded our guilt will become in end of the fight."

He tried to lift his weight off the mattress, but she pressed her hands over his chest. "You need to stay in bed and heal. You deserve some rest, Steve," She said her voice firm and testing his resilient will power. Steve shot his hard gaze to the floor, avoiding her empowering chasms of the mixtures of blue and green, his heart was pounding like a race horse, sweat began to glaze over the planes of his back.

Steve released a long and deep that he had been holding. He inclined his head back up. His blue eyes gained a guarded look and jaw tensed. "I can't stay here and allow Bucky slip away again." He winced, clenching his lids shut and felt pain flood through his system, something that no morphine could take away, and it was too deep. She felt herheart throbbing as veins became scorched with the hunger and desire to take everything out of him. «I lost him once. Never again-"

She leaned in closer and crushed his lips with wet heat, not giving him a chance to protest and avoid this moment, ripping the words out of his mouth as she plunged deep, sampling the taste of him like pure vodka, rolling her tongue against her. A droning moan slithered up his throat as she pressed harder, making his breath suffocating under her lips. Hr managed to break away for a second to gather enough air as he panted out heavy coattails of breath. He groaned as she climbed over the side of the bed, easing her slender frame over his massive bulk. "Natasha, I don't think this is good..."

"Shut up, Rogers. You need this." she smothered his words as her tongue slipped along the ridges at the roof of his mouth, twisting, exploring and gasping at the taste of him, slick and unyielding to her waltz. Just let go, Rogers. Her soul ached as she closed her eyes, feeling his soft lips move under as their pulses grew erratic. She hummed as she felt him equally kiss her back Steve pulled out and left moisture down the side of her neck, pressing as gentle as he could against her pulse point, sucking and sliding along her scars and onto her shoulder, she felt weightless and lost as time froze between them.

She discovered that nothing in her dark shaded world compared to the power of his lips. He was magnificent, and treated her like a woman, not a slave to his desires, but a delicate, blooming rose to shield over against the crimson flames of her sins.

Steve lifted his head slightly up, his nose buried into her strands of scarlet, "Thank you, Natasha," he said against her skin. She had been compromised, disarmed and loved by him.

Natasha framed her hands over his angular face, and caught his lips again. She kissed him long and deep, and melted away what remained of his guilt like morning rays turning snow into slush. She licked the arched line of his upper lip as she pressed her body against his, her breasts, curves and firm weight. He wrapped his broad arm over her lower back, holding her close as each of their heart beats followed the others in a sync rhythm of need. He carefully brushed her curls back and drew out a breath against her neck before pressing a kiss there.

"You too, Steve." She replied in a low hum of whisper, feeling the truth escape her mending heart. She took the pain away from him, and he somehow found a way to heal her wounds.

Deep beyond all the masks she wore, Natasha knew that Steve would always be her partner, guiding her out of the darkness and back into the light.


End file.
